The Book of Pythiaxe, Part Four

The sun was low, fading through the trees, as I pulled up to the entrance of the Sacred Grove Cemetery. The gates were wide open; it closed at 8:30, and the clock in my Prius said 6:17. 

            I parked in front of a small office with a Welcome sign hanging over the door. Inside, a man in a gray jacket set his phone down on his desk. “Yes? How may I help you?” A nameplate in front of him said REG SCHLEMMER.

            I showed him the picture of Marcy. “I think she may have come in here with a group of people about an hour ago. Do you remember?”

            Schlemmer peered at the screen. “I remember a couple of people. Didn’t look a family, but who knows? There was a tall girl who looked like her.”

            “Do you know where they went?” I was getting close at last. Maybe I could get home before Rachel’s class was over.

            “I think so.” He swung his chair over to a computer. “Let me see. Last search. Yeah, right here. Lester DeWald.”

            “Who?”

            “The resting place they were looking for.” He opened a desk drawer. “Let me find it here for you.” 

            Schlemmer unfolded a paper map and spread it out on his desk. He checked his computer, then circled a spot. “Right there. You part of them?”

            “Sort of. I’m running late. Thanks for the map.”

            “No drinking or partying.” The man pointed to a list of rules behind his desk. “No picnics. It’s all there on the map, too.”

            “I’ll remind them.” I headed out the door. 

            So who the hell was Lester DeWald? I didn’t have time to search the internet for him. Maybe I’d find out in a few minutes.

            My tires slid on the gravel road as I headed up the main route into Sacred Grove. The cemetery was a maze of trees, tombstones, and memorial statues, and one wrong turn would send me to Mordor or Narnia without any idea of how to find my way back. With the sky getting darker, I was going to have enough trouble finding Marcy and their friends without getting lost. 

            I found two cars parked next to a grassy lawn halfway through the cemetery. I checked the map—this should be the right spot—and grabbed a flashlight from the glove compartment. 

            Tombstones rose from the ground, three or four feet tall or taller. Grave markers, flat in the earth, gaze up at the cloudy sky. Some had flowerpots on either side. Some were almost covered by grass and weeds.

            Heading up the grass, I swung the flashlight beam left and right across the ground, trying not to make any noise. After a few minutes I heard voices through the shadows, and spotted a yellow light glowing up ahead. 

Then the voices turned into a single voice, and the talking became chanting, deliberate and rhythmical. The light came from a lantern sitting on top of a tombstone, a candle flickering in the night.

            Five people stood in a circle, holding hands. A young, tall woman in a long coat stood in the center, holding a thick book in her trembling fingers, rocking back and forth on her heels as she read out loud. Chanting.

            “Marcy!” I waved my arm. “Marcy!”

            She looked up from her book, over the heads of the people gathered around her. Mostly Marcy’s age, one older woman, all in jackets or hoodies. Some turned their heads to glance towards me, but Marcy lowered her eyes and went back to reading, ignoring me.

            I couldn’t make out what she was saying, or even be sure she was speaking English. The others turned back to face her, continuing their chant with Marcy. Something, something Pythiaxe, something, something something Pythiaxe . . .

            “Marcy!” I reached the circle, and pointed my flashlight into her eyes. “Marcy Pratt! I need to talk to you! Your parents are—”

            Marcy blinked into the light, then slammed the book shut with a smile on her lips. She tossed it to the ground and held her arms wide, turning to the tombstone in front of them.

            “Pythiaxe!” she screamed.

            For a moment the cemetery was silent as the moon.

            Then a white light erupted from the ground. I dropped the flashlight, staggering back, shielding my eyes with my hand. Marcy—or someone—screamed again, and a blast of wind knocked me down. I felt the others fall, grunting, and then someone laughed. A loud laugh, joyful but sharp. Then the silence fell again.

 

I jerked up. I was sitting in the grass. Did I pass out? I searched the ground for my flashlight, patted my pockets to make sure I still had my phone and my keys, then scrambled to my feet.

            The others lay on the grass, some unconscious, some just blinking at the dark cloudy sky. 

            Marcy was gone. 

            Damn it. 

I swung my flashlight all around, looking for some trace of her, but the beam touched only the shadows of the tombstones surrounding us.

            I stepped over a woman’s leg to the center of the circle. Marcy’s long coat lay on the ground, the book beneath it. I snatched it up and opened it, flipping through the pages in the lantern’s flickering light.

            It looked like the same book I’d found in her apartment. Maybe a little different—the pages were thinner and delicate, like parchment. The leather cover was thicker and heavier. No page numbers, but a folded Post-It marked what looked like the page Marcy had been copying in her apartment. 

The older woman rolled over and groaned. I dropped the book on Marcy’s coat and walked over. “Are you Juana Norris?”

            “Huh?” She rubbed her eyes. “Who are you?”

            “Tom Jurgen. Marcy’s parents hired me to find her. What are you people doing out here?”

            Juana Norris sat up, looked around, then took a deep breath. “Did it happen?”

            “Did what happen? What’s going on?”

            A man next to her rose to his knees. He was in his 30s, with an earring and a slanted nose. “It must have happened.”

            I sighed. I reached out a hand and helped the man to his feet. “What’s your name?”

            “Terry. Just—Terry, okay?” He looked me over, puzzled. “Who are you?”

            I stood close to him. “Okay, Terry.” I did my best tough guy snarl. “I want to know what you guys are doing here, where Marcy Pratt is, and what happened to Herman Weiss. Or I’m going to be your worst nightmare. Me, Tom Jurgen.”

            Rachel would have laughed. But these people didn’t know me. 

            Terry pushed me away. “Hey, hey! It’s just a ritual. We do this stuff—”

            “What kind of ritual?”

            “The calling of Pythiaxe,” Juana Norris said. She was standing now.

            I turned to her. “So who’s Pythiaxe?”

            She fixed her eyes on me, her teeth clenched. “The spirit of will, free of the old rules, embracing the power in all of us.” Then she laughed. “Really, it’s just a lot of mumbo-jumbo about freedom and free will. Almost Libertarian stuff. No shame, no Puritan morality, no obsolete rules. It’s a goof.”

            “A goof? Someone attacked Herman Weiss. He’s in the hospital.” At least I hoped he was. Not in the morgue.

            “Wha . . .” Her eyes opened wide. “Herman? I don’t—” She looked around. “Wait, is that why he didn’t show up?”

            The others were waking and standing. Terry, two other men younger than me, and a young woman. Elise Maimon, probably. They all seemed confused.

            “Someone bashed in Herman’s head,” I said, hoping to get through to at least one of them. “Probably to get this book.” I held it up.

            “Hey, where’s Marcy?” That came from Elise, a woman around Marcy’s age, in a furry jacket, with blond hair tied back in a ponytail.

            “I don’t feel so good.” A man sat down on the ground abruptly, as if his legs had given out. College age, Black, he looked as if he was about to hyperventilate himself into unconsciousness until Terry knelt next to him. “You okay, Dante?”

            “What the hell is going on?” My frustration was growing, along with my worries about Marcy. “What are you doing here? Why—” I turned to the tombstone with the lantern in front of it, illuminating its carved letters. 

            

Lester DeWald

1917-1999

Free of the bonds

 

            “Who’s Lester DeWald?” I pointed at the lettering. “Why are you at his tombstone?”

            A man stepped toward the tombstone. He was close to my age—mid-40s, maybe—with graying hair in a baseball cap. “Lester was the last one to raise Pythiaxe.” He ran his fingers across the stone. “Pythiaxe is in there. Was in there. That’s why we had to be here.”

            “Is that what Marcy was reading? A spell to raise Pythiaxe from the grave?”

“Oh, God, Marcy.” Elise swung around. “Marcy? Marcy! Where are you?”

The others turned, looking around. I looked at Juana. She took a step away from me, wary.

“What was supposed to happen?” I asked. “After you summoned Pythiaxe?”

The man at the tomb stalked toward me. “This is none of your business.” He jabbed a finger at me. “Get out of here.”

“Finding Marcy Pratt literally is my business.” I ignored his finger. “Who are you?”

He dropped his arm, glaring at me. “I’m Kurt. Kurt DeWald. That’s my grandfather.”

“Okay.” Veteran reporters always say good questions don’t produce answers, just more questions. But this was getting ridiculous. “Are you trying to resurrect him? Or—you know what, never mind. I just want to know where Marcy is.”

“Marcy!” Elisa called again. “Marcy?”

Then Kurt DeWald hit me in the gut. Hard. I doubled over, and my foot slipped on the grass. I fell over, gasping for air and hoping not to revisit what I’d eaten for breakfast hours before. I saw his feet pound the grass, running away.

To their credit, the rest of them didn’t join in on beating me, or follow him into the night. Terry said, “What the hell?” and Elise shouted after him, and Juana leaned over me, her eyes wide. “You okay?”

“Peachy.” I let her and Terry help me to my feet. I planted my hands on my hips, looking from one to another. “Okay, you guys are going to tell me what’s going on. In painful detail. Right now.”

“What about Marcy?” Elise’s eyes darted around. “Shouldn’t we look for her?”

I sighed. Yeah, that was the point of all this. “Five minutes. Spread out. Then come back. I’ve got a lot of questions.”

“Why the hell should we do what you tell us?” Terry was scared, maybe scared enough to run. I didn’t blame him.

“Because someone attacked Herman Weiss, and it’s connected to what happened here, and the police aren’t going to be as nice as me when they ask you questions.” I pointed to where Marcy’s coat on the ground. “All I care about is finding her. Help me with that, and maybe the police don’t have to write down all your names for their files.”

That seemed to get through to them. They separated, and I took a quick walk in the growing darkness too, but Marcy wasn’t nearby. Neither was Kurt. 

“Who did Marcy come with?” I asked, back at the tombstone.

“Me.” Elise bit her lip. “It was me, Marcy, and Terry.”

“So where was Marcy for the last three days?”

“I don’t know. She just showed up at my apartment and said we had to come out here. I called Terry, and—”

I turned to Juana. “What about you and Dante? And Kurt?”

“Me,” Juana said. “Marcy called me, and I called Dante and Kurt, and then I picked Kurt up from Herman’s house. Kurt said Herman was coming on his own. I thought that was weird, but—oh, God . . .” Her face went pale.

I had lots more questions, but we couldn’t stand around and talk in the middle of a cemetery. After a few minutes of arguing everyone finally agreed to follow me to someplace where we could talk. Mostly because Elise insisted. 

“I’m really worried about Marcy,” she said over and over again, until they gave in and got into their cars.

The Book of Pythiaxe, Part Five

We ended up in a Waffle House a few miles away. I actually ordered waffles, because of my missed lunch, along with bacon—because Rachel’s a vegetarian and I hardly ever get the chance. Elise just asked for a Coke. Juana ordered toast and coffee.

“So.” I looked around the table. “All of you have taken classes from this guy Leonard—I mean, Lance Cody, right?”

They nodded. ”I took three classes with him,” said the Black guy, whose name was Dante Willard. “British Lit, religion, and the folklore class.”

“And Herman Weiss was in the class?” I asked. “Along with Kurt DeWald?”

“Yeah,” said Juana. “They were friends. They hung out with us when we went out after class.”

            “How did you start meeting outside class?” I crammed some waffles into my mouth.

            “We were talking about fairy tales,” Juana said. “The princess and the frog? And then we got into Ovid and the Metamorphoses. I was sitting next to Herman and we started talking, and he wanted to talk more after class. At first I thought he was hitting on me, but then he asked Kurt to come too because Terry had a book he wanted to look at—”

            “It was an old book of Greek myths,” Terry said. “Some of them influenced Ovid, I was talking about it in class—”

            “And then the next week I was sitting with Marcy,” Juana continued, “and she ended up coming, and Elise came too, and then Dante, uh, you were interested, I guess?” She shot him a look.

            Dante glanced at Elise, embarrassed. “Yeah, I admit it, I wanted to hang out with—with Elise.” He shook his head. “But it was interesting, too. Herman had a lot of cool books and stuff. And I backed off when you weren’t interested, right?” he said apologetically. 

            Elise sighed. “Yeah, okay. I guess it’s all right. We were all just talking about stuff, and—”

            The reality show drama could wait. “What about Marcy?” I asked. “How did she fit into this? What’s she like?”

            The table was silent. I took a last slice of bacon and shoved my plate away, trying not to show my impatience. The more time we wasted, the farther away Marcy could be. 

            “Marcy was—kind of angry at the world,” Elise said. “Bored with her job, impatient with people, resentments, frustrated with her life. She felt kind of stuck, I guess, and I think taking all kinds of offbeat classes made her hope she’d find something really different to do. She wanted to change herself, somehow.”

            “So what was happening tonight?” I looked around the table. “Anyone?”

            The pause was long, Awkward. Embarrassed. 

Finally Elise said, “Herman mentioned this book, ‘Breaking Through the Walls,’ or something like that. He said it had spells that could transform people, turn them into someone else. Marcy wanted it. Herman said you could get reprints of it, but they weren’t translated and the text wasn’t accurate. I guess Marcy got a copy of it, but it wasn’t right, the spell didn’t work. She was bugging Herman about it—”

“She was kind of a bitch about it,” Juana said. “Herman got mad and told her to forget it.”

I frowned, trying to sort it all out in my head. “So whose idea was it to go to the cemetery to Lester DeWald’s tomb and have Marcy read that spell, or whatever it was?”

Eyes glanced at each other nervously. 

“It was Kurt,” Dante said. “About two weeks ago. He’d been reading about Pythiaxe in other books and online, because of his grandfather, and he figured out that there was a spell in the book that would bring him out.

“He thought Pythiaxe was trapped with his grandfather, in the cemetery.” Again Elise stared out the window, as if wishing she was anywhere but here in a Waffle House talking about this.

“Yeah.” Juana shook her head. “He said he needed someone to do the ritual and draw Pythiaxe out so his grandpa could rest in peace, or something like that.”

“He wasn’t real clear,” Terry said. “Kurt’s kind of—odd.”

“It sounds pretty crazy, now that we’re talking about it.” Dante crumpled up a napkin and tossed it across the table.

“Why Marcy? Why didn’t he do it himself?”

“Marcy wanted to,” Elise said. “Something about Pythiaxe lit her up. The freedom, the power, whatever. Like I said, she’s pretty resentful against the world.”

“But Kurt didn’t try to talk her out of it,” Dante said. “I think he—well, he’s an older guy, but you could tell he was kind of using the idea to hit on Marcy. I mean—”

An older guy? DeWald was my age, but I needed to let that slide. “Was Cody in on this at all?”

They looked at each other. Elise said, “Kurt was there sometimes waiting after class. They talked a little, like they knew each other.” 

“And Weiss? He was all for it?” 

“He was really worried about getting the spell right.” That was Terry. “He said there were lots of incorrect versions. He said he’d have to find the right one.”

From the library Cody had showed me? “What was supposed to happen afterward? After the ceremony?”

“We were supposed to go back to Kurt’s place and party.” Juana snorted. “Yeah, right. What was I thinking?” 

Kurt’s place. Maybe I should have asked about that first. I grabbed the last of my bacon and waved for the check. “Okay, so where does he live?”

 

Kurt DeWald owned half of a duplex on a busy street just off the highway not far from the cemetery. Of course, he wasn’t home when I got there. Damn it.

            I knocked at the other half of the duplex. A man in his 70s, irritated, had no idea where his neighbor was, hadn’t seen him all day, and didn’t even know the guy’s name. He had too many weird visitors, though, and sometimes he played his TV too loud with weird movies that he had to pound on the wall to make him turn it down.

            In my car I called Rachel. But she was in class, so it went to voicemail. I sat for a moment, tired, cranky, frustrated. 

            I decided I needed to know more about Kurt DeWald and his grandfather, more than his neighbor could tell me and more than I could learn on my phone in a parking lot. Time to go home.

            I listened to the news on the highway. A battle in Ukraine, a lawsuit against Twitter, more fighting in Washington, a shooting downtown, and, in lighter news, a string of vandalism in the northern suburbs—someone knocking over trash cans to spew garbage over the streets, smashing headlights on parked cars, breaking restaurant windows, and screaming obscenities into the night. Witnesses described a young woman running and laughing before vanishing into the side streets.

            That made me worried. 

It’s a long drive from Northbrook to my Lincoln Park apartment. By the time I got home Rachel was on the sofa, watching TV and drinking a beer. It was 8:30. 

“How was class?” I locked the door.

            “Boring. Got an extension on my paper, so I don’t have to steal one from the internet.” She turned the TV down. “How’s the missing daughter?”

            “Still missing. There may be demons involved.” I hung my jacket on the hook near the door. “I hesitate to ask again and risk your wrath, but did you find out anything about, whatever it was—” My mind was fuzzy. “MIskal?”

            “I sent some stuff to you, but it’s pretty basic. I asked Carrie, she said she’d get back to you.”

            “Great.” Carrie is Rachel’s best friend. She knows a lot about the supernatural, more than Rachel or I do. For some reason she doesn’t like me, but she’ll usually help if it’s for Rachel. “Thanks.”

            Rachel frowned. “You okay?”

            I rubbed my eyes with a sigh. “Long day. Almost found her, but she ran off.” I’d gotten another email from Marcy’s parents while driving. I owed them a progress report, even if my progress hadn’t gotten me very far. Yet. 

            “Them’s the breaks.” She picked up the remote. “Anything I can do?”

            “The night is young. I’ll let you know.” 

Rachel went back to her show. I went to the kitchen to make coffee, and then headed into the office for my computer.

            First I sent an email to Marcy’s parents, trying to sound reassuring without offering false hope. I looked at what Rachel had sent me on Miskal, but it wasn’t much better than a Wikipedia page—in fact, most of the stuff looked like it had been copied and pasted from Wikipedia. 

            There was no more news on the suburban vandal. Was it Marcy? Pythiaxe? Or just a drunken teenager? Whoever it was, I hoped a few broken windows was the worst of it. But I couldn’t count on that.

            So I started looking into the DeWald family.

            Lester DeWald had been born to a farming family, and grew up to become an engineer for a farm equipment manufacturer. After retiring, he bought a gas station off the 294 highway, where he fixed cars as a mechanic until a few years before his death. That was from his obituary in the local Northbrook paper.

            Digging deeper, I found that Lester had been fired from his manufacturing job, not retired, after a lawsuit involving defective tractor parts. His gas station was foreclosed on after he didn’t make any payments for a year. The documentation I found suggested drugs and drinking had contributed to his downfall. He’d been arrested on drunk and disorderly charges more than once, the last time in 1998. At some point after that he went to a state mental hospital, where he died in 1999.

            His wife had divorced him in 1972, around the time he was fired from his engineering job. She died in 1993. Two kids, a boy, Jack, and a girl, Janice—Kurt’s mother.

            Kurt was also an engineer, with a degree from the U of I at Champaign-Urbana. He’d worked for Motorola for 15 years, then left for a smaller firm making something for laptops and tablets—I couldn’t figure out what, and I was afraid to interrupt Rachel to ask. He was divorced, no kids, and as far as I could tell from his social media, he had no current girlfriend, or boyfriend, or other kind of long-term relationship. He had one arrest for drunk driving, and a few for marijuana possession. 

            Then I looked up Pythiaxe. 

            The images that came up first were disturbing. Pythiaxe was depicted in paintings, woodcuts, and drawings as a squat, goat-faced man-beast with long twisted horns and bony fingers. The articles I found described a kind of Dionysian figure, hedonistic and pleasure-seeking. Stories about him originated in ancient Mesopotamia, a long time B.C. 

I drank some coffee. I wasn’t worried about sleep. I’d be up half the night worrying about Marcy anyway. Like her parents.

            I started organizing my notes for the report I’d have to write. It had been a long day, and maybe I’d missed something or forgotten a clue in the rush. Olivia, Warren, Cody . . .

            Cody. Worth a shot.

            “Hi! Did you find Marcy?” He sounded distracted. Hurried.

            “Not yet. Almost.” I should have tackled her at the cemetery. “Look, do you know a man named Kurt DeWald? He’s a friend of Herman Weiss, apparently.”

            Cody hesitated. “Uh, yeah. I know Kurt.” His voice was wary. “He was in my class, sometimes. Kind of creepy.”

“What about a character named Pythiaxe? Have you ever heard of him?”  

“Yeah. Herman asked about him, in the folklore class. I had to look that one up. Pythiaxe was some kind of demon. I thought it was odd that Herman was interested in him.”

“Well, Kurt’s grandfather tried to raise him before he died in 1999.”

“Oh. He—how did you find out about that? What happened at the cemetery?”

“I’m not sure.” I felt a chill in my skin. “Marcy apparently raised Pythiaxe using the ritual from that book. Then she disappeared.”

“Wow. What about Kurt?”

”No idea, just that he’s not at his house. Any idea where he might be?”

“N-no. Sorry. I wish I could help you.”

“Yeah. Well, have a good night.” I hung up.

Now what? Whatever Kurt had in mind for Marcy—and Pythiaxe—it couldn’t be good. Where could they have gone? Anywhere. 

Then it hit me. 

I looked at my phone, but realized a phone call wasn’t going to be enough. So I started gathering what I hoped I wouldn’t need—my Taser and my pepper spray. I thought for a moment about the gun we keep locked in the bedroom, but decided to leave it there. I probably wasn’t going to have to shoot anyone. I hoped.

“I have to go back to Northbrook,” I told Rachel in the living room.

“Again?” She muted the TV and turned on the couch as I stuffed the pockets of my jacket. “Everything okay?”

“Maybe. Yes. I hope so.” I leaned down to kiss her. My phone buzzed in my pocket.

Carrie. “Hi, Carrie, what’s up? I’m on my way out the door—”

“I got what you wanted, dude.” She sounded pissed, as usual whenever she had to talk to me. Why didn’t she like me? No time to worry about that now, I had enough to panic over. “I’m sending it to you now. TLDR? This Miskal is some sort of demon who’s locked in eternal combat with another demon, called Pythiaxe. Pythiaxe is—”

“I know who Pythiaxe is.” I could see Carrie’s email delivery on my phone. “Okay, thanks. Gotta go.” I hung up. “Why does she hate me?”

“She thinks you’re not good enough for me.” Rachel shrugged.

“After all this time? Never mind.” I slung my jacket over my shoulders. “Wish me luck.”

“Don’t get killed.” She turned and picked up the remote. “I mean it. I love you.”

“I love you too,” I said, but I wasn’t sure she heard me before her show came back on

The Book of Pythiaxe, Part Six

Outside my destination I sat in my car, reading everything Carrie had sent me about Miskal. None of it made me feel any calmer about what I had to do. 

But I couldn’t just drive home. Marcy’s parents were desperate. And Rachel—even though she gets mad at me for taking stupid chances—would be disappointed in me for just driving away. And that would be worse.

So I took a deep breath and got out of the car. 

I pressed the bungalow’s doorbell. After 30 seconds the door opened.

Cody looked out. “Tom? What’s going on?”

“I’m here for Marcy,” I said.

He blinked at me. Gripped the doorknob, as if ready to slam it in my face. Then he sighed. “You sure you want to do this?”

Hell no, I thought. “Let me see her.”

He stepped back to let me in.

Candles lit the living room. Bottles of beer and wine sat on the table where we’d had tea this afternoon. 

Kurt slouched on the sofa, his eyes glazed as if he were high, in jeans with bare feet. He glanced over at me, scowled, then turned his face to Marcy and smiled.

Marcy stood in the center of the room in just her bra and panties, with one white sock on her left foot, the other one bare. Her eyes glowed with a white light, and her skin looked gray. Sweat dripped down her shoulders, and her hair was a mess. She was tall and slender, more like a ballerina poised to leap than a basketball player getting ready for a free throw.

She turned her head toward me, then turned away, silent as a stone.

I glared at Cody. “I knew I couldn’t trust you.”

“It’s not like that.” He reached down to snatch a bottle of beer. “I was actually trying to protect her. I knew Kurt was up to something creepy with Marcy—”

“Nothing like that happened.” Kurt’s voice was low and raspy. “She came to me. Herman, I mean, but he knew about Pythiaxe and my grandfather. Something about him made her obsessed. Right, Marcy?”

Marcy cocked her head, as if she didn’t understand the language. One hand curled into a fist, then relaxed, limp. As if gathering strength.

“How did you get here?” Cody asked. “I mean, why—”

“You asked what happened to Kurt. But I never told you he was at the cemetery. You knew I was going to the cemetery. Marcy and Kurt both came with other people, but when we looked for them after she did the ritual, they were both gone.”

Cody nodded, his face tense. “I went looking for her there. She was running next to the road, like that—” He gestured toward her half-naked body. “Laughing and kicking at tombstones. She had her markers and she was drawing on them, and Kurt was right there with her—”

“I was trying to calm her down!” Kurt shook his head. “You don’t know how powerful Pythiaxe can be. She’d only just done the ritual. Plus, you interrupted her, and I wasn’t sure—”

“So you two got her into your car and came here,” I said. “Stopping along the way for some petty vandalism.”

Cody groaned. “She kept jumping out of the car. I really just wanted to help her. Kurt wanted—” He glared. “I don’t know.”

“So what’s your deal?” I stood between them, my eyes on Marcy. “Pythiaxe possessed your grandfather—killed him? Is this some kind of vengeance?”

“No, you idiot.” He reached forward for a glass of wine. “I wanted my grandfather to rest in peace. He couldn’t, as long as Pythiaxe was trapped in there with him. I could feel it—I could hear them, every time I visited the grave. They were both shut up in darkness, in chains beneath the ground. I just wanted him to be free. For them both to be free, like they both wanted.”

“By giving him to Marcy?”

Kurt shook his head slowly, looking over at Marcy’s body. “She was willing. Do you know anything about her? She’s bored, she’s rebellious. She’s curious. She was ready for something else, something more. Like Grandpa was looking for.”

“To be free?” 

He gulped some wine. “No rules, no bullshit. Just open doors and wild creation. No limits.” He pointed at Marcy. “Tell him. Tell him!”

Marcy—Pythiaxe?—turned her head toward me. Her eyes blinked slowly. Then her lips rose in a smile. “Who are you?” Her voice was flat, distant, as if someone else was typing words for her from far away.

“Your parents hired me. You disappeared. They’re worried.”

She cocked her head with a frown. “No. I don’t want to see them.”

“You see? You see?” Kurt put his wine glass down. “She doesn’t want you here. She’s fine. Get out.”

“Shut up.” I pulled my phone out. “Pythiaxe? I want to talk to Marcy. Let me talk to her.”

“He won’t do that.” Kurt shook his head. “It doesn’t—”

“I said, shut up.” I tapped my phone. “Okay, Pythiaxe? I’ve got someone here you don’t want to meet. Let go of Marcy, at least for a minute, or you’re going to get Miskal.”

Marcy flinched. Her toes curled in her lone sock, and she lifted a hand to brush a strand of hair from her face.

            “No.” Kurt took a step toward me. “You don’t have any right—”

            I switched the phone to my left hand, reached into my jacket, and yanked out my Taser, pointing it at his chest. “Stay away from me.” 

He took a step backward, arms lifted. Good. I could still feel his punch to my gut. 

            “What are you doing?” Cody was keeping his distance, his eyes on my phone more than my Taser.

            “I’ve got the ritual to bring Miskal here.” I scrolled awkwardly down through the note Carrie had sent me and read: “‘Miskal and Pythiaxe are demons from Mesopotamian mythology representing opposites—east and west, day and night, life and death, and so are locked in eternal combat with each—’”

            “I know who they are,” Cody snapped. “You can’t just run the ritual like this. It was dangerous enough for Kurt to have Marcy do it.”

            “I don’t care.” I swung my eyes between the two of them. “I’ve had a long day and I’m all out of patience with you guys. Marcy’s parents are worried sick about her. I need for her to talk to them. Not Pythiaxe. Her.” 

            I looked at Marcy again. Her head was cocked, listening to me as if trying to decipher a foreign language. 

            “Marcy?” I asked. “Are you there?”

            Marcy—Pythiaxe—growled.

            I scrolled with my thumb. I really didn’t want to do this. Even if it worked, I was taking a risk. If it didn’t work, I was taking a bigger one. But I didn’t have time to come up with anything better.. 

            I cleared my throat. It was dry, and I was suddenly thirsty, but I didn’t want to put the Taser down for a sip of Kurt’s wine. So I swallowed, looked at my phone, and started to speak.

            I was guessing at the pronunciation, because what Carrie had sent me was a phonetic version of ancient Aramaic, just like the Pythiaxe ritual. I hoped that wouldn’t screw things up. I didn’t want to accidentally call another demon while I was trying to—

            “Miskal!” Marcy screamed, like a challenge or a curse. She charged forward and tackled me to the floor. 

            I lost both my phone and the Taser as I pushed at her sweaty body, struggling for breath. She clawed at my shirt, her jaws wide as if she wanted to clamp her teeth on my throat like a vampire. Part of me wondered how I’d tell Rachel that about wrestling a half-naked woman. Most of me just tried to keep my neck away from her teeth as I fumbled for my Taser.

            Then I heard Cody’s voice. I couldn’t understand what he was saying, until I realized he was chanting. Reading the ritual from my phone.

            “No!” I croaked. Marcy’s face jerked away from me, and then she left me on the floor, pulling herself up and leaping toward Cody.

            He held onto the phone as Marcy—Pythiaxe—wrapped her fingers around his throat and kicked at his crotch. He doubled over, still reciting the unknown words in a strangled voice as Marcy shook him, shrieking.

            I rolled, searching for the Taser on my hands and knees. Kurt was off the sofa, reaching down, and I shoved myself forward, my shoulder against his knee. He fell, swearing, and kicked my ribs, but I managed to get the Taser and scramble around.

            I was a little too late.

            Cody was standing straight, his eyes white, the air around him glowing. He smiled, stretching his arms in front of him as Marcy staggered back, shaking her head, trembling. “No,” she whispered. “No . . .”

            Then she lunged at him again. “MIskal!” 

            They grappled with each other. Light flowed from their bodies, swirling around them like angry fireflies, and they rocked back and forth, shrieking and growling.

            “You idiot!” Kurt was right behind me. “They’ll kill each other!”

            I waved the Taser to keep him back. “Just shut up, okay? I’ve got this.” At least I hoped I did.

            Cody had dropped my phone. As they clawed and punched at each other, I snatched it from the floor and scrolled further down. If Carrie was right—

            I found the passage and started reading. Again, I didn’t know if I was pronouncing anything right, and I was gambling that it wouldn’t matter too much. 

            Again Kurt lunged at me, batting at my phone. I slammed an elbow at him, and missed, and he grabbed at my arm.

But I still had the Taser, and I was tired of him. I pointed and squeezed the trigger, and the twin darts shot into his stomach.

“Ahh!” Kurt screeched, his body shaking from the jolt of electricity, and he fell down, twitching and moaned.

I dropped the Taser, hoping I hadn’t hurt him too much. But not caring at the moment. I went back to my phone.

Cody and Marcy were staring at me. I started the chant over, talking fast, backing away and they started to step toward me. I almost tripped over Kurt, but I finished, then started over again, in case I didn’t get it right the first time.

            They kept coming. I read faster. I couldn’t shoot the Taser at them again. I took more steps backward until I felt one of Cody’s bookcases on my shoulder. Maybe I should quit reading and take a picture so Rachel could see what killed me. If this didn’t work—

            Cody stopped and looked at me. Like he really saw me. Then he turned to Marcy. She punched his chest, but he caught her wrist and held it, staring into her glowing eyes. 

            She jabbed her other fist at him, but he held his ground, breathing slowly, as the light around them started whirling faster. Marcy leaned her head back and screamed, and Cody grabbed her shoulder to keep her upright. The light burned brighter, blinding me until I looked away. It was cold, not hot. I shivered, the hair on my arms and the back of my neck standing up hard.

            Then the light burst, like an exploding lamp. A blast of cold air knocked me to the floor, and I covered my head, waiting for the house to collapse around me.

            It didn’t. I opened my eyes and sat up.

            Cody and Marcy lay on the floor, breathing slowly. Kurt was still twitching from the Taser. As I stood up, Marcy rolled her head and looked around. 

            “You okay?” I held out a hand.

            She pulled herself up, looked me over, then glanced around the room. “Shit,” she murmured. 

            Cody groaned and forced himself to sit up. “Uh . . .” He blinked. “What happened?”

            I picked up my phone. “My friend included a ritual for sending Miskal away. Since they hate each other, Pythiaxe and Miskal pursue each other endlessly. They’ve been doing it for thousands of years. That’s the legend, anyway. I was figuring it might work now.”

            Marcy glared at me like a cop about to read her rights. “Who are you?”

            “Tom Jurgen. Your parents hired me.” I looked around, found an afghan on the sofa and handed it to her in case she wanted to cover up. “Which reminds me . . .” I found them on my phone. 

            “Mrs. Pratt? Your daughter’s fine. Here she is.” I handed the phone over.

            Marcy grimaced, pulling the afghan around her shoulders, but she took the phone. “Hello? Mom?” She sighed. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’m okay . . .”

 

Rachel was studying when I got home. “Find her?”

            “Yes, but she was not happy about it.” I hung my coat up and set the Taser on the table next to the door. “My clients are, though, which is all that counts.”

            Marcy Pratt had been unhappy before I’d ever met her, apparently. Her parents were hypocrites, the health care system sucked, the world just swallowed whatever Fox News or MSNBC shoveled at them, misogynistic men protected each other, and nobody cared that the environment was turning into a flaming cesspool. She told me all that while I was driving her home. At least she didn’t believe lizard people had replaced the president and King Charles.

            “I thought maybe I could change,” she told me after calming down a little. “I didn’t buy everything Kurt said about Pythiaxe—that guy is creepy—but the way the world is going, I just wanted to get out of the box, you know? Do something different. Not have to listen to assholes. You know?”

            “I get it,” I told her. It was true. We all wish we could break free sometimes. Most of us aren’t willing to trade our body and our soul for it, but I didn’t say that to her.

            Kurt DeWald had picked up on all that, and nudged her toward resurrecting Pythiaxe from his grandfather’s tomb. She tried writing out the ritual from the book she’d bought with Codfy, but it didn’t feel right, so she went to Kurt on Sunday for help. That led them to convince Herman Weiss to get the older version. 

            “I guess he looked at it and freaked out,” Marcy said. “I heard them arguing on the phone. Then Kurt told me he’d take care of it, just get the others to the cemetery and he’d bring the book. I didn’t think he’d whack him in the head. Asshole. Herman was kind of nice.”

            She’d kicked Kurt a few times as he was coming out of the Taser blast, after I told her about Weiss but before I managed to stop her. I told Cody to call the police and hand DeWald over, and then I took Marcy back to her apartment.  

            “You don’t understand,” she complained as I walked with her to her door. “They’re all so—oblivious. My parents just wanted me to be a good girl and do the right thing. Olivia’s nice, but she just watches TV and parties every weekend. My patients in the hospital—half of them are there because of things they did to themselves. The people in my class, they just want to find dates. Nobody gets it.”

            “They were worried about you,” I said, trying to be sympathetic. “After what happened at the cemetery. And your parents—well, everybody’s parents drive them crazy. But they were half out of their minds.”

            “Yeah.” Marcy stuck her key in the lock. “I’ll have to call them again. Hey, Olivia!”

            “Marcy! You’re all right! What happ—”

            Marcy shut the door. I heard the lock click on the other side.

            Back home again, I opened a beer and sank onto the sofa next to Rachel. 

            “Long day, huh?” She closed her laptop and patted my arm.

            I yawned. “I think I forgot to eat dinner. No, I had waffles. But I didn’t eat lunch, so I still haven’t had dinner.” I closed my eyes.

            “I can make you a grilled cheese.”

            “In a minute.” I lay there next to her, trying to let the tension ease from my muscles and mind. I’d have to talk to the police tomorrow about Herman Weiss, but right now I couldn’t think about anything but sleep. And food. “Oh, by the way, I had to wrestle a half-naked young woman tonight.” 

            “Did you enjoy it?”

            “Not as much as you’d think. Oh, I had bacon with my waffles.”

            “That you’re going to pay for.” She kissed the top of my head. “Hang tight. Grilled cheese coming up.”

            I was asleep by the time the sandwich was ready. But it was worth waking up for.

 

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